Singer Porsche 911 at the Radnor Hunt Concours

A Singer 911 is one of the most beautiful vehicles that money (a lot of money) can buy these days. The painstaking fine detail work found these cars is right up there with Pagani, in my opinion, but it comes in the familiar package of an old-school Porsche 911.

There is a level of subtlety about a Singer 911 that you just don’t get with a show-stopping exotic hypercar, although it is surely no less special a machine. To most onlookers, a Singer 911 is just another Porsche rolling through town. It would take someone with a keenly trained eye to recognize the car for the rare masterpiece that it is out in the real world — at which point you can expect that person to immediately drop what they’re doing and give chase to snag a photo of it.

Outside of Monterey Car Week, this is the first Singer 911 I’ve seen out and about in my area, the Northeast USA. We caught it in the car corral at the Radnor Hunt Concours d’Elegance this year, and it drew quite a crowd throughout the day. The owner was very gracious, and opened the car up to show off all of its magnificent details, which I’m now pleased to share with all of you.

Enjoy the gallery of this stunning machine, and there’s more info on the car itself below.

The whole idea behind the Singer 911, or “Porsche 911 Reimagined by Singer” as they like to say, is to build the perfect old-school 911 experience possible with a mix of old and new technology.

Based on the 964 generation Porsche 911, the cars all have air-cooled flat 6 engines, they’ve all been lightened with carbon fiber elements where possible, and they all feature meticulous craftsmanship and attention to detail throughout. Basically, you buy yourself a 964 (preferably an old, beat up one), and you bring it to Singer, along with a large check, to have turned into the perfect 911 of your wildest wet dreams.

Oh, and that check had better connect to an account with quite a bit of money in it because these things don’t come cheap. Basic pricing starts in the mid-high $300,000 range, and can go up pretty much as high as you want, depending on what custom work you want done to the car. Many clients spend in the range of $500,000-$600,000, which is where the car you see here wound up.

This dark blue Singer 911 currently holds the distinction of being the lightest Singer 911 built to date, according to the owner. At just 2,100lbs, it is 200lbs lighter than the new ND Mazda Miata, and with a hefty 280hp flat 6 engine to propel it.

Now, Singer makes their own modified versions of air-cooled 911 engines, including their top-range 4.0L flat 6 that produces 390hp. The owner of this car wanted to keep things simpler, so he opted for the lighter engine package, just 20hp up from standard 964 spec, to keep the weight as low as possible. This little blue car still has a tremendous power-to-weight ratio, though. If you do the math, you’ll find it sits in between a current Porsche 911 GTS and 911 GT3.

So it has solid performance with just about the most-pure Porsche 911 driving experience imaginable, but what you really pay for is the fact that a Singer 911 is a work of automotive art. All of the metal accents on this car are nickel plated, and would you just look at the leather in the interior. Singer keeps the overall simplicity of the 911, but they add so much richness to everything about the car.

There is not a doubt in my mind that this Singer is among the most “special” cars on the road in my area of the country. For me the Singer 911 represents an ideal of perfecting the past. I love what they do because they actually save and preserve old deteriorating 911s for the future. Hats off to the folks at Singer!

I still dream of the day I may drive one for a review article. This car is right up there next to the Pagani Zonda for my all-time favorite cars.

-Nick Walker